Australian sexual abuse victims bring campaign for justice to Israel

From
left to right: sisters Elly Sapper, Nechama Meyer and Dassi Erlich with
Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky in Jerusalem on October 27 2017

Australian PM is expected to demand Leifer's extradition during his meeting with Netanyahu

During
his official visit to Israel this week, Australian prime minister
Malcolm Turnbull will demand justice for three sisters whose alleged
serial sexual abuser is living free in the city of Bnei Brak after
successfully avoiding extradition by checking herself into psychiatric
care on the day of her scheduled court appearances.

For
the first time since launching a concerted public campaign last year,
Australian woman Dassi Erlich and her two sisters are in Israel to heap
pressure on officials to revive the stalled extradition process for
former teacher Malka Leifer, wanted by police in the state of Victoria
on 74 charges relating to sexual assault.

And Erlich has the growing anger of the Australian community -- Jewish and not -- behind her.
Leifer,
an Israeli citizen, fled Australia on a midnight flight in 2008 after
allegations surfaced that she had sexually abused more than eight
teenage girls, both as students and teachers, at the ultra-Orthodox
Adass Israel School in Melbourne.

The extradition process
has been moving at a snail's pace for years because court-appointed
psychiatrists in Israel say she is too mentally ill to attend an
extradition hearing, although she has not been admitted to ongoing care
and was photographed this year in attending a raucous Lag B’Omer
religious festival in the village of Meron.

The only
conditions placed on Leifer by the Jerusalem District Court were that
she surrender her passport and attend psychiatric appointments roughly
once every four weeks for up to ten years. There are no limits on her
contact with young girls, something the sisters say is deeply
concerning.

Malka Leifer, a former principal wanted for extradition to Australia on sex abuse charges is pictured here in 2006

There is swelling outrage in
Australia’s Jewish community and among survivors of sexual abuse over
the case, enough that it has begun to taint Jerusalem’s ties with what
is seen as one of the most Israel-friendly governments in the world,
just as hundreds of Australians descend on the country for the 100th
anniversary of the ANZAC campaign in Be'er Sheva.

A
delegation of Australian lawmakers is attempting to get a meeting with
Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked next week to hammer home their
frustration over the legal process. Israeli prosecutors are understood
to share their concerns.

Erlich met last month with
Turnbull, who on Monday was asked what he will tell his Israeli
counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu about the case during a much-anticipated
visit alongside a bevvy of senior Australian political figures and
Jewish community leaders.

“What I'll say is that justice demands that she be brought back to Australia to answer the charges,” he told a press conference.

Last
week, Dassi and her sisters, Elly Sapper and Nechama Meyer, took their
battle to the Knesset, the Jewish Agency, and the state prosecutor in
the hope of a breakthrough if they turn the screws on senior Israeli
officials.

On Thursday the three women met with Jewish
Agency chief Natan Sharansky in Jerusalem ahead of the board of
governors meeting this week, which they described as “inspiring and
encouraging”.

“He assured us he would raise this issue
with the Israeli government, not only for justice but for the safety of
Jewish children in Israel and was well on behalf of the Jewish
diaspora,” the sisters told i24NEWS.

The meeting
was arranged by Mark Leibler, chairman of the Australia/Israel &
Jewish Affairs Council (approximate to the Australian version of AIPAC),
who earlier this year met with Shaked to press home the Australian
Jewish community’s anguish over the stalled legal process. He did not
respond to a request for comment on the meeting.

The
sit-down with Sharansky came after a session in the Knesset on
Wednesday in which the sisters strategized with Israeli lawmakers.

Likud MK Sharren Haskel -- who lived in Australia for several years -- told i24NEWS
that “it’s a very big issue for the Jewish community and an important
issue for legislators in Australia,” adding that it was frequently
brought up in her meetings with legislators during a recent visit to the
country.

“I’ve been working in the past few months to
make sure that the PMO, the foreign ministry, and the justice ministry
are all aware of this situation and are turning the wheels quicker to
make sure that this person will get a trial,” she said.

Influential
Zionist Union member Meirav Michaeli, who has also met with Dassi on a
trip to Australia earlier this year, said it was “inconceivable that a
predator -- even though she’s a Jewish ultra-Orthodox woman -- should
enjoy an immunity just because the people she allegedly victimized live
abroad.”

Michaeli noted that she and
Michal Biran, another MK who has taken a strong interest in the Leifer
case, have initiated a discussion in the Knesset’s health committee to
get "some answers as to the way she’s been playing the mental health
issue: turning it on when there’s a hearing and turning it on when she
can live her life.”

On Friday Leifer's lawyer, Yehuda
Fried, described her condition as "chronic" and said that she is barely
able to hold a conversation or leave her home. He added in an interview
with Haaretz newspaper that the extradition "will never come."

Leifer’s
alleged abuse against at least eight pupils -- victim advocates suspect
there are more who are too afraid to come forward -- was described as
“destructive and evil” by Victorian Supreme Court Justice Jack Rush QC
in his decision to award Erlich $1.27 million Australian dollars
(approximately $979,000 USD) in damages after a 2015 civil suit. It was
the largest payout to a survivor of sexual abuse in the state’s history.

“Leifer
used her position of control, power and authority within the school to
manipulate the plaintiff’s sense of vulnerability,” the judge wrote,
adding that the motivation was her own “sexual gratification.” Community
members in Australia who tried to support victims at the time say they
have been subject to threats and intimidation from people connected to
the Leifers.

Evidence given in the case -- which was not
disputed by the school -- said Leifer targeted girls who struggled with
issues at home and carried out abuse in closed rooms at the school, on
school camps, and in her private home.

According to the
evidence, Leifer would tell the girls during the assaults that she was
preparing them for marriage and showing them how to love.

The
Adass Israel school is the heart of eastern Melbourne’s insular and
strictly observant Adass community, within which mixing of unrelated men
and women is tightly controlled, and interaction with the outside
community limited.

Dassi lived an ultra-Orthodox
lifestyle in Israel for two years in the period before making the
decision to seek justice through the courts.

"It feels so
weird to be here for this reason, I never imagined coming to Israel for
this," she said. "Never in my wild dreams did I imagine coming here for
this. It feels so strange that we are here doing this but the level of
campaigning had become so big that we feel it was necessary that we come
here.”

“When I lived here I was living here as a Haredi
(ultra-Orthodox) religious woman, still living a very sheltered life, I
never imagined that this is where I would end up.”

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